need you right now,” I growl, standing up and grabbing for my pants. “I can’t wait another fucking—”
But then the buzzer cuts through the house, the buzzer I had installed because the doorbell was too quiet.
“Shit,” I mutter, knowing who it is and also knowing how I forgot.
It’s Lilah.
She could make me forget a burning building with that sensual body and those kissable lips, her pussy glistening even brighter now.
“What is it?”
“The police,” I sigh. “They’ll want our statements.”
“Oh, yeah,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “I can’t believe we just spaced out on that.”
“I can,” I say. “But come on. Let’s go and get this over with.”
I lift her to her feet and wrap my arm around her shoulder, holding her close, willing my manhood to deflate before I get to the front door.
Chapter Eight
Lilah
The next day, I sit at my desk in my bedroom with the script laid out before me, staring at the lines as my chest rises and falls like there’s a freaking creature in there.
That was by far the best solo line-reading I’ve ever had, the lines coming from me passionately and fluidly, and yet without the melodrama that sometimes marks my work.
The knowledge that this is inextricably linked with Dominic smashes into me and I know it’s true, because the scene was one in which my character is mourning a lover, and being apart from Dom this past night and day has been just like that.
After giving the statement to the police, fate conspired against us again when Dom was called back in to work. I saw the uncertainty wavering across his features, but in the end, we both knew he had to go in.
There were lives to save.
I stood on my tiptoes and wrapped my arms around him, bringing my lips to his and trying to quiet that niggling inside of me that told me this was all going to crash and burn just like the theater, collapse all around us and become a charred husk.
The police have Dom’s security footage and they’ve been made aware of the situation with Craig, but in the meantime, there’s nothing they can do about it, and Dom made me promise not to go anywhere on my own until everything is sorted.
I sigh and stand up, walking over to the window and looking down at Mom in the backyard.
She’s a flash of billowing summer dress, multicolored, her hair streaming down her back with a bandana folded and tied in a strip across her forehead.
She’s at her birdhouse, clicking her tongue quietly as a smile spreads across her lips, causing her mouth to quirk as she talks in her own made-up language to the birds.
The problem with being at home is that it brings the thundering reality crashing down on my head.
Dom has claimed me and I want him, need him – my womb is screaming out for him like a Viking maiden – and yet he’s also Dad’s best friend and a friend of the family.
I turn away from the window and return to the desk, dropping into the swivel chair and spinning around twice, my thoughts spinning along with my body.
Last night, as Mom and Dad and I sat around the dinner table, Dad smelling of the construction site and Mom smelling of the natural homemade shower gel she used, and the smell of her meatloaf undercutting all of it – just another home scene like a gazillion from my childhood – Dad turned to me with an innocent look on his face.
“So, how was the drive with Dom?”
I stared at him for a few long minutes, or at least what felt like long minutes. It must’ve only been a moment or two but time seemed to stretch as I studied my father’s face, searching it for any sign that he somehow knew what had happened, what we’d done.
What we’d become.
I wondered if I’d be able to encompass it all over meatloaf, telling him about Dom claiming me, and that we’d been intimate, about Craig re-entering my life with his stalker’s ways.
And all in the space of one morning.
Would he even believe me or would he think the fire had somehow messed with my mind?
“It was fine,” I said noncommittally.
“He’s a good man,” Dad went on, spearing a forkful of the loaf. “I just wish he’d settle down.”
“Oh, Mark,” Mom said, shaking her head slowly. “You’re such a traditionalist. Why should he settle down if he’s happy?”
“Because he wants to settle down,” Dad said, passion in his